I was going to post a nice, cheery “can’t wait for Christmas” ramble this week, but I’ll save that for later because a more pressing matter is at hand.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I hate this pandemic. I hate what it’s doing to workforces in developing countries, I hate what it’s doing to children – the way it’s killing them slowly or robbing them of their childhood as it leaves them orphaned and in charge of siblings. But more than that, I hate the stigma that still surrounds it, I hate the ignorance and judgment that comes from so many in the West, and I hate how little we’re doing about it.

I attended a seminar on HIV and AIDS in New Zealand recently. The person lecturing said someone called her recently to ask what they should do with a discarded tissue that had been used by an HIV-positive person. I’m not surprised – we like to think education and awareness has led us to a place of higher knowledge in this country, but because most of us are not confronted by the realities of HIV and AIDS every day I think it’s quite the opposite.

What those of us who care about slowing the tide of destruction HIV and AIDS is causing know is that stigma and discrimination in developing countries are our biggest barriers to any sort of success. Yet, we as Kiwis appear to suffer from it too, and I find the damage that this is causing hard to bear.

I’m going to quote two people I hold in high regard:

“Jesus did not say, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw some’, Jesus said, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw all, all, all, all, all.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“God is in the the slums… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunities and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”
Bono

How do we get away with ignoring this in our country? How do we as Christians, and more specifically Catholics, get away with turning a blind eye? How do we get away with a discriminating immigration policy that stops people infected with HIV from entering this country? Are we really so naive and unfeeling as to think we can keep our heads buried in the sand about this? Are we really so stupid as to think we won’t be called to account about ignoring the needs of so many of God’s children?

• 38.5 million people are living with HIV – 24.5 million of those are in sub-Saharan Africa
• there are currently 12 million children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa
• 1500 children under the age of 15 are newly infected with HIV every day